Help made this job go quicker

Thanks to my husband who helped me calculate date of death values - and alternate valuations this afternoon. I've (re)learned that he can be a really nice guy. Together, it took the two of us about four hours. For stocks, you need to calculate the value by averaging the high and low price for the date of death. You do this for the actual date of death and six months later. For mutual funds, there's nothing to calculate. You look for the sale price in historical data. We used yahoo finance to calculate our prices.

Because I'm doing this for both my parents (who shared most of their assets), it was double the work. Sort of. I had to calculate for the date of my mother's death, the date of my father's death and then my mother's alternate valuation. It's too soon to calculate my dad's alternate valuation because he hasn't been gone six months yet. That just means in another few weeks, I'll have to do it all over again.

Another thing I (re)learned today, and something I've already shared here, is that I can see what I've learned and haven't learned by trying to explain something to someone else. Today I tried to explain to my brother all that I thought I learned from an attorney I met with in New York in December. I took my notes from that day that I hadn't looked at since that day. And then I typed them up all up in an email to my brother. I was happily surprised at how few times I had to write "at least I think that's what he meant" or "I think that's what he said."

One thing that I learned from the attorney is what it means to settle an estate. How do I know if the estate is settled? He explained that the estate is settled when the assets are all collected, the estate taxes are paid and that we get a closing letter from both the IRS and from New York State saying that no more taxes are due. At that point, there needs to be a formal or informal accounting of what we have spent and what's left. The beneficiaries give me a receipt and release once I give them their assets. That releases me from further obligation.

The question came up when I met with the attorney about how to split stocks amongst 5 different people. He said that the cleanest way is to liquidate everything right before distribution. Then it can be easily divided. Leaving stocks to distribute "in kind" (as stocks) gets messy with fractional amounts of shares. I do wonder, though, about the tax consequences of liquidating everything before distribution. We will acquire the cost basis of the date of death valuation of Dad, but again, really need to look at the tax consequences of doing so as we get closer to this point. Right now, it seems like a long way off.

Something else I learned from this attorney is that because Dad never inherited Mom's IRA and it's gone into her estate, it's technically no longer an IRA and it's simply stocks (that will probably need to be liquidated) to distribute out of her estate. This will be the only asset to pass directly from Mom to her beneficiaries (my brother and I). So no inherited IRA from Mom. This is not exactly what I learned from the institution where Mom held her IRA (and that I shared with you earlier last month).

I already have the things I'd like to learn about tomorrow on my "to do" list. I had hoped to file the paperwork to get my dad's death benefit from his union but I learned that can't do that without the paperwork that says that I'm the executor of the estate and that won't happen until the attorney I've hired for probate has done his thing.

Instead, I'll learn about setting up inherited IRAs from two different institutions. And I plan to learn about transferring stock from Computershare... and where it actually has to get transferred to. That, to me right now, is a big mystery.

And now back to reading my executor and trustee book! Lots more to learn.